Category Archives: michaeljasper.net

UnWrecked Talescontains twenty-one of the best stories I’ve written in the past two decades (!), give or take a year or three.

From the Author’s Introduction:

Some stories were gauntlets thrown down by friends editing anthologies. Some were hatchling ideas that later were added to novels. Some were side trips from other novels that didn’t make it into those bigger stories. Some were just strange nuggets of humanity that needed to be shined up and shared.

I did my best to polish up all these nuggets and organize them for you in some sort of coherent structure. But feel free to jump around and let yourself be surprised.

Like this:

It’s taken a while to get here, but I’m happy to announce that my new novel is finally available! Today marks the launch of the second book in the “slightly paranormal” Finder Team mystery series: Lost & Finders.

NOTE: This book does have a cliffhanger ending, but the book that follows it is not only the third book in the Finder Team series, but it’s also the third book in the Family Pack series. Yes, this third book is a crossover, featuring characters from both series!

Here’s the official book description — I hope you enjoy it!

You can only stay lost for so long…

Mid-summer in the mountains. The breeze carries the smell of pines and campfires, and expensive cars with Florida plates clog the roads. The students at nearby Appalachian State are gone for the summer, and Bim Mayer and Hank Johnson get to enjoy a lazy start to August after a rough winter and busy spring.

But they soon realize that summer’s gotten just a bit too lazy. Something is going down in the remote Blue Ridge Mountain town of Boone, North Carolina. People stop by the Finders, Inc. office to tell stories about whispering strangers just outside of Boone, and they aren’t white-haired tourists asking for directions to the antique stores.

Then, during one week in early August, half a dozen people from all walks of life are reported as missing. The Finder team suddenly has its hands full with work, with Bim (and his special mental skills) carrying the bulk of the finding on his rounded shoulders.

As summer heats up into a scorching fall and bizarre clues continue to pile up, Bim and Hank might just lose more than a couple pounds and a few nights of sleep. They could lose everything.

Like this:

I use Scrivener to write fiction, and it has all sorts of bells and whistles to keep track of notes and ideas and inspiration. A while back I put together “character sheets” (for lack of a better term) for the main characters in the Finder Team mystery series.

So if you’ve ever wondered which actors (or directors!) I’d “cast” in the movie version of Finders, Inc.and Lost & Finders, well, wonder no more:

(click the picture to make it bigger)

At least, these faces are what I have in mind while I’m typing away. Thanks for indulging me!

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With just a little over three weeks(!) until the June 14th release launch of Lost & Finders from UnWrecked Press, I wanted to share the last section of chapter 1.

Just a reminder that the ebook version is available for pre-order from Amazon, and the trade paperback will be available very soon. Later this year the audiobook version should be out as well, which is awesome news!

If you want to read the first book in the series, Finders, Inc., you might be able to snag it for free as an ebook in the next few weeks over at Amazon (or heck, just buy it for $4.99!).

Here are links to the earlier sections of chapter 1 to get you up to speed: part 1, part 2.

Let’s go back to our big fella Bim, who just caught an old-fashioned black key thrown to him by his old friend Hank (aka Hanky J), and Bim slips into someone else’s head… Enjoy!

As we count down the weeks (days!) until the launch of Lost & Finders, the 2nd book in my Finder Team series, I wanted to share another chunk of chapter 1 of that book.

Lost & Finders is set to release on June 14, and the ebook version is now available for pre-order from Amazon.

In case you missed last week’s opening excerpt, here’s a link to it. Also, if you want to read the first book, Finders, Inc., you might be able to snag it for free as an ebook in the next few weeks over at Amazon (or heck, just buy for $4.99!).

Let’s go back to our big fella Bim, hanging out on the tiny company pool on the first day of August, when things get a bit… weird:

Like this:

Holy cow. There’s just a little over a month until the 2nd Finder Team novel comes out!

Lost & Finders is set to release on June 14, and I can’t wait to share it with you. The ebook version is now available for pre-order from Amazon.

Here’s a quick summary of the book (from the back cover):

Mid-summer in the mountains. The breeze carries the smell of pines and campfires, and expensive cars with Florida plates clog the roads. The students at nearby Appalachian State are gone for the summer, and Bim Mayer and Hank Johnson get to enjoy a lazy start to August after a rough winter and busy spring.

But they soon realize that summer’s gotten just a bit too lazy. Something is going down in the remote Blue Ridge Mountain town of Boone, North Carolina. People stop by the Finders, Inc. office to tell stories about whispering strangers just outside of Boone, and they aren’t white-haired tourists asking for directions to the antique stores.

Then, during one week in early August, half a dozen people from all walks of life are reported as missing. At the same time, Hank’s shifty brother William shows up again with wild stories about strangers in the darkness. The Finder team suddenly has its hands full with work, with Bim (and his special mental skills) carrying the bulk of the finding on his rounded shoulders.

As summer heats up into a scorching fall and bizarre clues continue to pile up, Bim and Hank might just lose more than a couple pounds and a few nights of sleep. They could lose everything.

And here’s a taste of the book itself, from the start of chapter 1. Enjoy!

Lost & Finders, chapter 1

At a quarter past one on the first day of August, wearing only a striped purple-and-white swimsuit and a bright green T-shirt, Bim Mayer decided that it was time.

Like this:

And just like that, it’s over halfway through March! This year is threatening to charge right by me.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to make some progress on a couple projects.

First off–and I thought this one was going to drive me batty–I was able to create a hi-res PDF that I could use to create a (drum roll, please!) trade paperback version of the digital comic I created with artist Niki Smith, In Maps & Legends!

Here’s a photo of it next to another one of my books for perspective:

Personally, I would’ve loved for it to be a bit bigger, just to showcase the art, but the company I’m using for the print version doesn’t have bigger sizes that are landscape versus portrait.

It’s a lovely book, and the full-color art really POPS. Here’s a shot of two of my favorite pages:

And after almost a decade now, we have a print version, which you can get at Amazon.com. I hope you enjoy it!

So far, 2018 is looking like a great year! As always, thanks for reading.

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And just like that, it’s December 31st! It’s been a very light year for posting blog updates for me. For a while, I cheated and cross-posted my Instagram photos here as pseudo-blog entries, but I think I’m ready to start some (light) blogging again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, thinking about all my goals for the new year.

I want to do something in the first half of this blog that I rarely do lately — take a look back. I’m usually busy keeping up with my daily To-Do List and mapping out my goals for the futures. So… what the heck happened in 2017?

Like this:

I’m so happy to report that the story that started out as a novel way back when, then morphed into a web-comic, then a digital comic, and a complete 9-issue storyline has now been optioned to be a movie!

I’m excited to see what the next 30 months hold for this story (12 months for the initial option, 18 for the extension, if needed).

I’d love it if the movie was actually made, but I’m skeptical, of course, just because making a movie is a gigantic undertaking with hundreds of moving parts. And I thought scripting all 192 pages of this comic was a challenge…!

It’s awesome that something I started working on nearly a decade ago has found a new life, and I’m just glad all the heavy lifting — for me — is already done.

Although now I’m already plotting out the next book in the In Maps & Legends series…